From "The Castle Genie,"Newsletter of The Passaic County Historical SocietyGenealogy Club

Vol. 8, No. 1As excerpted from theHerald & News of July 21, 1997

Many immigrants fled the poverty of their homelands in Europe in the
late 19th century to make new lives for themselves in the City of Paterson.
By the early 1900ís, immigrants from all over Europe desperate for work
were pouring into Paterson, which had become the nationís leading center
for mills that converted raw silk into the fine clothing worn by Americaís
wealthy.

The owners of the cityís silk mills sought skilled workers like weavers
and loom fixers by advertising in European cities known for silk production.
Thousands of skilled silk workers came to Paterson from silk centers like
Macclesfield, England; Lyon, France; Biella, Italy; and Lodz, Poland.

No extensive advertising campaigns were needed to attract the unskilled
workers who flocked to America in droves, desperate to improve their standard
of living. They came from the European countries of Hungary, Germany, the
Netherlands, Armenia, Italy, France, and Poland. They learned of jobs available
in the "Silk City" largely by word of mouth, settling here hoping
to fulfill their dreams of middle-class life.

By 1910, there were some 7,000 to 8,000 Italians -- mostly unskilled
laborers from southern Italy -- working about the mills, making them the
largest nationality working in the industry. There were also between 3,000
and 5,000 Jews employed in the Paterson silk industry, coming mostly from
Poland, Russia, and Germany. These immigrants maintained strong ties to
their hometowns, making it easier for family members and friends to follow
them here.

A typical day for unskilled workers meant 12 hours standing at a machine
doing boring, repetitive work, with only a 20-minute break for lunch. Conditions
at various mills were described as "filthy, dingy, damp, and dank, and
just short of inhumane." Workers were paid little more than a dollar a
day during their first few years at the mills. Sexual harassment laws did
not exist, and some bosses were sleazy characters; others were just downright
mean.

These same European immigrant mill workers, who brought with them a
strong tradition of labor protest and radical ideology, helped fuel the
American labor movement by participating in a spontaneous strikein
February, 1913 which eventually prompted a walkout of about 25,000 skilled
and unskilled workers, closing 292 mills in the City of Paterson.